


Bedroom Hymns

by ginger_mosaic



Category: Loki: Agent of Asgard, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Bad Romance, Bisexual Character, Genderfluid Loki, Hate Sex, M/M, Rough Sex, Self-Acceptance, Self-Love, but actually rated M for maturity or at least attempts to reach it, dubcon, hella the princess bride references, journey to self-love, mostly canon compliant, rated T for Tears before bedtime and all times in between, some canon divergence, spoilers for all of Agent of Asgard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 10:55:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4874107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginger_mosaic/pseuds/ginger_mosaic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Subtitle:) A Journey to Self-Love in Six Parts</p><p>They’re both sleazy as hell, and sometimes they give in to their more self-destructive tendencies.</p><p>Sometimes people need to, in order to grow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedroom Hymns

**Author's Note:**

> Uhh, this will be my first time ever posting sex scenes… Be gentle with me. (Unlike Sigurd is with Loki. ;) )

 

_I’m not here looking for absolution, because I found myself an old solution._

\- Florence + the Machine

* * *

 

 

**I. GET LUCKY (PART ONE)**

 

_We’re up all night to get some… We’re up all night to get lucky._

\- Daft Punk

 

He’s working up the courage to buy the red-head across the bar a drink—and by working up courage, he means getting sufficiently buzzed and thinking of a good pick-up line, because Sigurd the Ever-Glorious has no shortage of courage—when someone beats him to it and buys _him_ a drink. The bartender puts a gin and tonic on his table and he looks up.

“I hope this is from you,” he says.

She shakes her head and gestures toward the bar. “The man at the bar says he sends his regards.”

Sigurd leans around her to see and scowls. “Sure he does,” he mutters. She shrugs and goes back to her bar, and Sigurd ignores the drink on his table. Now that he knows the other man is there, though, he can’t concentrate on actually making a move under surveillance, so eventually he picks up the glass and sips it, annoyed.

Loki slides into the other chair at his table, smooth and easy like a serpent. “I was wondering where you snuck off to,” he says, setting his own drink down. It’s red and probably fruity.

“ _You_ sneak,” says Sigurd. “I walk away from bad deals and leave them lying in the trash where they belong.”

“And yet you still haven’t made the trip to Kaluu,” says Loki, leaning one elbow on the table and crossing his legs. “So at least you’re not a fool. You must suspect that what I say is true.”

“But no less suspicious,” Sigurd tells him. “How do I know you won’t just let Mephisto have me anyway? You hide tricks in your tricks. You always have.”

To Sigurd’s surprise, Loki actually winces, though he tries to hide it behind a sip of his drink. He clears his throat.

“I won’t let Mephisto have you because I want the All-Mother to throw you in her dungeons,” Loki says, and Sigurd raises an eyebrow so Loki quickly continues. “Then, when you’re inside, you’ll break out at the same time I’m mounting a rescue. We’ll meet at the Gate of Impregnability and you’ll open them for me. Thusly, you are freed and I have access to the dungeons. That’s really all there is to it,” Loki adds, shrugging.

“What exactly are you looking for?”

“We-ell…”

“No. Never mind. I don’t want to know.” Sigurd gestures to the bartender. He’s going to need another drink. Or twenty.

Loki shrugs. “Have it your way,” he says, beginning to absentmindedly doodle on a napkin.

“Two more of these, please,” Sigurd tells the bartender, waving the gin glass slightly.

“Two?” asks Loki, looking up to raise an eyebrow at him. “Going a little fast, aren’t you?”

“It’s payback for this,” he says, putting the glass between them. “I’m not going to chance owing you anything.”

Loki frowns. “It’s a mutually beneficial deal,” he insists. “I get into the All-Mother’s dungeons and you…”

“I get what?” Sigurd still isn’t clear on that part. He’s a little mad that Loki convinced him to give up belt that night. He _liked_ that belt.

Loki’s lips curl into a smirk and he pushes the napkin he’s been drawing on across the table. Underneath a rough sketch of a dragon is a very large number flanked by no less than seven dollar signs. Sigurd looks up and Loki grins.

“I take care of my friends,” Loki says.

Sigurd grunts. “You don’t have any friends.”

Loki purses his lips but doesn’t seem to have a comeback, which is a little pathetic. In the lull, the bartender returns with their drinks. Sigurd moves his on top of the napkin.

“Assuming that’s not an imaginary number,” Sigurd begins.

“Well, Monte Carlo is down a few million euros,” says Loki. “Check the papers.”

“How am I supposed to get myself out of the most secure dungeons in Asgardia?” he continues.

“Second-most secure,” Loki corrects. “And you’re Sigurd the Ever-Glorious, Asgard’s first hero! I’m sure you’ll find a way.”

Sigurd only glares at him until Loki sighs.

“But if you need a hand…” he says and reaches into his pocket. “I _have_ been looking for you, you know. I did want to find you and give you this before you got yourself into trouble, but you cut contact after—”

“What is it?” asks Sigurd impatiently.

With a flourish, Loki produces a small, opaque white orb and offers it to Sigurd. It’s about the size of a ping pong ball and it has a seam, but as Sigurd starts to turn one hemisphere, Loki snatches the orb back.

“What, are you crazy?” he hisses. “I hand you a magic ball of unknown origin and you try to open it in a public bar?”

“What is it?”

“Acid, you utter dolt. For fuck’s sake…”

“Give it to me,” Sigurd demands, holding out his hand. Loki rolls his eyes and passes it back over, and Sigurd turns it in his hand. “Okay, how does it work?”

“Well firstly, you don’t _open_ it, you throw it,” Loki says. “And stand far enough away to avoid the splash. Six feet should do it. Avoid contact with skin and clothing; if you get it in your eyes, rinse with fresh water immediately; et cetera.”

Sigurd nods and stows the orb in his jacket pocket.

“I assume that you pocketing my magical item means you agree to the deal,” says Loki, scowling.

“That amount of money is enough to risk trusting you,” Sigurd tells him. “And if you are tricking me, well…” He leans back and smirks. “You’re right, I am Sigurd the Ever-Glorious, and I will find a way.”

Loki grins. “That’s the spirit!” He picks up his glass of gin and raises it. “To mutually beneficial deals.”

Sigurd raises his glass, too. “To Monte Carlo,” he says.

“The poorer bastards,” agrees Loki, taking a sip.

“How’d you clean them out?”

Loki smirks. “Just lucky, I guess.”

Sigurd doesn’t quite believe that, but he also doesn’t care. “So is that all, then?” he asks.

Loki is watching the dance floor at the other end of the bar, and he looks back at Sigurd. “Hmm?”

He hasn’t left yet, so there must be something he wants. Sigurd isn’t going to wait around to let Loki manipulate him into just giving it up.

“Is there another reason you tracked me down to this bar tonight?” Sigurd clarifies.

Loki sips at his gin and tonic without looking away from Sigurd, considering him for a moment. Then he sets his glass down and leans forward, elbows on the table.

“If there was another reason,” Loki says slowly, “what might you want it to be?”

Sigurd takes a drink to give him a second to think. Well. It isn’t like he has other plans tonight anymore. And Loki is admittedly… Well.

“You sort of interrupted my plans,” he says. “I guess I’d like to make… other arrangements.”

Loki raises an eyebrow and then smirks. “Well, if you’re asking,” he says, “then I’m definitely dancing.”

Sigurd downs the rest of his drink and stands to walk past Loki to the dance floor. He slides into the crowd without looking back and begins to dance. It doesn’t take long for Loki to catch up, and Sigurd feels Loki’s hands slip over his hips from behind. He pulls Sigurd closer and grinds against him and they dance for a while, moving in the sweaty crowd near the speakers in this cheap-ass bar. This isn’t exactly what Sigurd had planned for the night, but he supposes it is close enough.

He turns around at some point and puts his hands on Loki’s ass, pressing him closer. Loki has his arms around Sigurd’s neck, which he licks periodically in a way he probably thinks is sexy.

“Your place or mine?” Sigurd says into his ear.

He actually hears Loki’s groan over the booming music. “Yours.”

Sigurd pulls away and leaves the dance floor to settle his tab. When he goes outside, Loki is standing on the curb, and when he sees Sigurd come through the door, he flags down a taxi.

“A taxi? Really?” says Sigurd.

“I’m buying,” says Loki. “Gods bless Monte Carlo, remember?”

“Can’t you teleport us there?”

“I’ve had quite a few drinks, Sig,” he says. “You want to end up in Paris?”

“I’m more partial to Madrid.”

“Well, no promises,” says Loki, getting into a taxi. “Hence the taxi.”

Sigurd shrugs and slides in after him. He gives his address to the driver and as soon as he’s done, Loki grabs him by the shirt and yanks him in for a sloppy kiss. He tastes like too many vodka pomegranates and gin. Their teeth clack together and it takes them a while to find the right angle, and Sigurd suspects that he might be drunker than he thinks. Loki’s hand slides under Sigurd’s shirt and starts to rub circles on his lower abdomen, so Sigurd grabs Loki’s hair at the back of his head and yanks him back to break the kiss and then pushes his face down into his crotch. His hand moves to Sigurd’s belt, and the driver groans.

“Please don’t,” says the driver. “Not in the cab. I can handle the making out, but please, no blow jobs in my cab.”

Loki sits up and leans over the front seat. “I’ll pay you double the cab fare.”

The driver groans again and shakes his head. “Just… just save it for the bedroom, guys, all right?”

“ _Triple_.”

Sigurd pulls Loki back by the shirt. “Forget it, man,” he says, because even though the driver appears to be considering it now, Sigurd can tell he’s uncomfortable. And sleazy and somewhat of an exhibitionist he might be, but the driver’s level of discomfort isn’t a turn-on for Sigurd. Loki appears to have the opposite opinion, because he looks displeased. Ugh. Loki is _so_ not his usual type. That sort of careless exhibitionism is only sexy on women.

To stave off any complaints that could spoil the night, Sigurd quickly covers Loki’s mouth with his own. Loki grunts into the kiss, but at least he doesn’t try to speak and ruin everything. He shifts to straddle Sigurd’s thighs, and Sigurd hears the driver sigh, but he doesn’t say anything else for the rest of the ride. When they reach Sigurd’s house, Sigurd pushes Loki off and climbs out of the cab while Loki pays. He also appears to be talking to the driver, but finally he gets out. The taxi pulls away rather quickly.

“Pity,” he says.

“What?” asks Sigurd, starting up his walk.

“I asked if he wanted to join us,” says Loki. “Gave him a hefty tip, too, as a bribe.”

“He wasn’t into it.”

“I’m sure, given time, I could have convinced him,” says Loki, following Sigurd up his front steps. “I have a very persuasive tongue.”

“If only you’d use it for something other than talking,” says Sigurd, and when he gets his door open, he grabs Loki’s shirt, drags him inside, and kisses him again. Loki steps forward to press Sigurd against the wall of his front hall, shoving one knee between Sigurd’s. He sticks a finger into the waistband of Sigurd’s jeans to test how tight they are, but he isn’t wearing skinny jeans like Loki is, so it’s easy for Loki to slip his hand inside Sigurd’s pants and take hold of him. Sigurd throws his head back, and Loki sucks on his neck as he rubs Sigurd, a little too slowly. Sigurd grabs his head again, but he stops when their eyes meet. Loki’s pupils are dilated, and he looks almost scared.

“What?” Sigurd demands.

“Nothing,” Loki breathes, and then he ducks his head to suck on Sigurd’s neck again.

Sigurd huffs and suddenly remembers the kid. The kid—How long ago was Loki only a punk fourteen-year-old in Asgardia? Months? A year?

He pushes Loki away.

“How old are you?” he asks.

Loki scoffs. “Old enough,” he says, his chin raised defiantly.

“I’m serious. You’re Thor’s kid brother. Or you were.”

“I grew up,” says Loki, and he grabs Sigurd again and smashes their lips together, and Sigurd figures that this is true, because no way would any kid know how to do _that_ with his tongue.

Loki grinds against Sigurd’s thigh, his hand still down Sigurd’s pants, but Sigurd wants this to go a bit faster, so he pushes Loki off as hard as he can. Loki stumbles back with the force of it and grunts as he hits the wall, and when he looks up, there is a fierce hunger in his eyes. Sigurd quickly crosses to press Loki against the wall, but before he can, Loki shoves him and he stumbles backwards into his living room. Loki pursues him, but Sigurd surges forward to push back and they crash into each other, but before Sigurd can get the upperhand, Loki hooks a foot around Sigurd’s ankle, making them both stumble and fall onto the couch. With Sigurd on his back, Loki quickly begins to undo his pants with one hand at the same time as trying to pull Sigurd’s legs up.

“Uh-uh, no,” says Sigurd quickly. “That’s not how it’s going to work.”

Loki scowls down at him. “What?”

“I don’t do bottom,” he says firmly, shifting back.

Loki huffs. “Well—”

“No. Shut the fuck up.” Sigurd grabs Loki by the hips and drags him up on top of his own. Loki presses his palms on Sigurd’s shoulders and tries to shift down again, but Sigurd will _not_ have that. He bucks his hips up and flips them over the edge of the couch to pin Loki against the floor. Loki’s head smacks the floor and he looks dazed for a moment, so Sigurd takes the opportunity to finish what Loki started and undoes his belt and pushes down his jeans and underwear to free Little Sigurd. When Loki recovers, he wriggles out of his tight pants somehow, and then Sigurd presses down and grinds against him. They’re both fully hard already, but Sigurd remembers his lube is in the bedroom and he doesn’t want to get up after finally winning the top.

“Sigurd,” Loki moans.

“Fuck,” he says. “Get up.”

Loki chuckles breathily. “I already am.”

“Shut up. Bedroom.”

Loki frowns but, by some miracle, doesn’t argue. Sigurd stands and grabs their discarded pants and throws them into the bedroom, and as he starts to walk, he feels Loki yank on his jacket. He shrugs out of it and turns, and Loki catches his mouth in a kiss and begins to undo Sigurd’s shirt buttons, and Sigurd reaches down to tug Loki’s shirt over his head and shrugs out of his own shirt in the same movement. Loki forces him to walk backward, and Sigurd knows he’s going to try again, so he steps to the side and his back hits the doorframe, allowing him to use Loki’s momentum to turn him and throw him into the bedroom. He lands on the edge of the bed and glares.

“Sigurd,” he begins to complain.

“Are we doing this or not?” Sigurd snaps, crossing his arms.

Loki looks at him sullenly. “Fine,” he bites out.

“Great.” Sigurd walks around the bed, yanking the comforter off as he goes, to his side table and takes the lube from the drawer and tosses it to Loki. “Get yourself ready. I’ll be right back.”

Loki scoffs, his jaw dropping. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’ll be right back,” he says again, and he leaves the bedroom and goes to the kitchen, because he’s going to need another drink to deal with Loki. He pulls out a bottle of Asgardian mead and takes a swig. After sleeping with Bor’s shieldmaidens, this might be the stupidest thing he’s ever done.

When he gets back to his bedroom, Loki is still fingering himself, so Sigurd gets on the bed behind him and takes over. Loki moans as Sigurd presses his fingers inside him, and Sigurd slowly pushes him over.

“Sigurd,” he moans again after a while.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sigurd. He’s definitely ready, so Sigurd pulls his fingers out and lifts Loki’s hips to press the head of his cock into the curve of his ass. Slowly, he pushes into Loki and Loki inhales sharply and exhales in a groan when Sigurd is fully inside him. Then he laughs.

“What?” says Sigurd, annoyed.

“Mm. Nothing. Just, ah, haven’t heard the Old Tongue in quite a while,” Loki explains. “Mortal lovers tend to swear in more modern languages.”

Sigurd didn’t realize he had sworn. “Well, I’m no mortal,” he says, pulling back a little. “Think you can handle it?”

Loki laughs again. “Show me what you’ve got,” he says, his grin clear in his voice.

So Sigurd does. He starts slow to set a rhythm and speeds up once he’s got a good grip on Loki. Loki moans and gasps and breathes heavily under him and he keeps saying Sigurd’s name. Every time he does, Sigurd resolves to pound into him as hard as he can, and Loki seems to catch on because he starts to say it at intervals, sometimes over and over again and sometimes more spaced out when he wants Sigurd to slow down, and this is fine with Sigurd because he just likes the way Loki moans his name like a prayer. Sigurd knows he’s talking too, but he doesn’t know what he’s saying.

He’s brought down from this sort of mindless fucking when Loki reaches back and slaps Sigurd’s arm a little helplessly.

“Fuck, yeah, take it, you bastard—What?” he snaps when Loki tries to grab his wrist.

“Nng. Touch me.”

“Touch yourself.”

Loki grunts again. “You’re really—” He stutters as Sigurd thrusts hard in an attempt to get him to shut up. “ _Really_ bad at this.”

Sigurd pulls out and Loki hisses.

“What the fuck did you say?” he snarls.

Loki looks over his shoulder and tries to turn around, but Sigurd grabs his hips and holds him in place.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“I’m not here to get you off,” Sigurd growls, digging his nails into Loki’s hips. “This is happening because you cockblocked me at the bar.”

“I didn’t see you making much progress.”

“Shut. Up. I swear by Odin’s empty eye socket, if you say one more word, I will gag you.”

Loki groans and presses his face into the mattress, clutching the sheets in his fists. “Can we _please_ not mention my father while we’re fucking?”

“Then shut your fucking mouth.”

Loki glares at him over his shoulder, his lips pressed in a tight line, and nods. Sigurd repositions himself and, angry, slams into Loki all at once. Loki gasps and moans, and then begins to whine as Sigurd pounds into him hard and fast. He gropes at the sheets helplessly and says Sigurd’s name in longer intervals, but Sigurd ignores him and reaches up to push on the back of his head, gripping his hair and pressing his face into the mattress to muffle his stupid whiny voice. Eventually he sees one of Loki’s hand disappear between his legs, and only a few minutes later Loki groans, shuddering, and probably coming into his hand. Sigurd is close, so he doesn’t slow even when Loki asks him to, when he whines for him to stop for a second, but soon it doesn’t matter because he comes and it’s fucking _glorious_ , because what else could it be? And fuck what Loki says.

Sigurd leans over Loki’s back to rest, breathing heavily. Loki’s arms shake and he takes several sharp breaths and then groans.

“Sigurd,” he complains, so Sigurd rolls his eyes and straightens, pulling out. Loki inhales in a very controlled way, and then after a moment, he collapses face down onto the bed and moans.

“So I’m bad at this, huh?” says Sigurd, slapping Loki’s ass as he swings his legs over the side of the bed.

Loki chuckles into the sheets. “Don’t flatter yourself,” he says, his voice muffled. “You’re good, but you’re not the best I’ve had.”

Sigurd scowls at his back and gets up. He goes to the bathroom to clean up and wets a wash cloth, and when he gets back to the bedroom, Loki is still lying face down. He seems satisfied enough, the bastard. Sigurd throws the wash cloth at him and it smacks his back, startling him. Loki looks up and pushes his hair back out of his eyes.

“Clean yourself up,” Sigurd orders, and he waits until Loki is sitting up to add: “Then get the fuck out of my house.”

Loki narrows his eyes in a glare and then begins to wipe himself off. “You sure know how to make a girl feel special, Sigurd,” he mutters.

“Yeah? Let’s talk when you’re a girl and not a slimy, traitorous bastard.”

Loki looks up at him like he’s prepared to retort, but he swallows it and gets up to gather his clothes. “Thanks for the good time, Sig,” he says as he pulls on his pants. He winces a little, which makes Sigurd feel smug.

“I’m guessing despite my best efforts, I’ll see you around,” says Sigurd, climbing into bed and lying back against his pillows.

Loki smirks. “You can run, but you can’t hide,” he says, sitting on the edge of the bed. He puts a hand just above Sigurd’s knee and slowly slips it down to the inside of his thigh. “Perhaps next time—”

“There isn’t a next time,” says Sigurd, bending his knee to push Loki’s hand away. “Get out. Looking at you is making me hate myself.”

Loki carefully doesn’t give him a reaction, which just means he _does_ have a reaction, and that’s enough for Sigurd. Miraculously, Loki leaves without another word, and when he hears his front door close, Sigurd sighs.

He’s never doing anything this stupid ever again.

* * *

 

 

**II. LOVER TO LOVER**

 

_There’s no salvation for me now, no space among the clouds,_

_and I feel I’m heading down and that’s all right._

\- Florence + the Machine

 

Loki resolves to make Sigurd into a liar, which turns out to not be so difficult. Despite his assertions that “This is the last time,” and “I never want to see your stupid face again,” and “If you come to my house one more time, I’ll breaking your fucking neck,” they fuck several times over the next two weeks, and Sigurd never refuses and it’s always at his place in San Francisco. Loki has other missions to attend to in the meantime before he inevitably hands Sigurd over to the All-Mother, so he figures this is a good way to keep an eye on Sigurd to make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid before Loki gets his chance.

They’re in between rounds when Sigurd himself brings it up. It’s one of the rare times that he doesn’t kick Loki out immediately after finishing, which is a relief because Loki doesn’t really want to go home. The All-Mother has been calling on him with more and more impatience as time goes on. He’s not sure how much longer he can drag this out.

“So when are you going to turn me in?” Sigurd asks, sitting up against the headboard that only minutes ago Loki was bracing himself against. Now he’s lying on his back and he keeps looking up and noticing himself in Sigurd’s mirrored ceiling, a long, pale figure sprawled out next to Sigurd’s darker silhouette, two warriors felled in battle and turned into celestial bodies on the sky of Sigurd’s dark sheets.

“Oh, you know, eventually,” says Loki, patting Sigurd’s thigh. “Fear not.”

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” says Sigurd.

“What’s that?”

Sigurd turns onto his side and looks down at Loki. “You think you’ve got me right where you want me.”

“Don’t I?” Loki asks, turning, too, and slipping his hand between Sigurd’s thighs.

“But two can play at that game.”

“Perhaps,” says Loki. “But only one of us is really _good_ at playing games. I’d be careful, were I you, about what challenges you undertake.”

“Playing, maybe, you can do,” says Sigurd, and he inhales a little sharply when Loki’s hand wanders up to gently take hold of him. “But winning? Not so much.”

“Hmm.” A rather… annoying observation. Sigurd hardens in his hand, though, and Loki smirks. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

“So, when?” Sigurd raises an eyebrow. “Or… have you changed your mind?”

 _That_ is wishful thinking. “Perhaps I’m just waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike,” he says, and he pushes on Sigurd’s hip to force him onto his back and then takes his whole length into his mouth.

Sigurd actually gasps and then reaches down to grip Loki’s hair. “You… snake…” he mutters.

Loki can’t argue with that; his tongue is far too busy with relatively more important things.

His chance comes shortly after that. Five days later, Sigurd finally finishes his preparations and goes to Kaluu—who is, as Loki warned him, actually Mephisto.

He was honestly trying to avoid another meeting with Mephisto, hoping to never have to deal with the devil again, and for good reason.

Because it turns out, Mephisto _knows_. He’s figured it out.

_Nicely done… Old chum…_

At least Sigurd doesn’t hear, and even if he does, it’s clear he doesn’t understand. But Mephisto knows, so Loki banishes him to his hell home and then Sigurd to Asgardia at the All-Mother’s feet. Sigurd even looks surprised when he does it, which is stupid of him. Loki _told_ him what he was going to do. What a fool…

Still, the betrayal in Sigurd’s eyes doesn’t sit right with Loki, so even that night he gathers his own agents and begins to plan Sigurd’s rescue. No sense in letting the poor man sit in the dungeons any longer than necessary.

It takes a week to get everything in order and they manage to complete the mission within the timeframe Loki gave Sigurd, so when he and Lorelei arrive at the Gate of Impregnability, Sigurd is waiting to open the doors. He seems inordinately pleased—it couldn’t have been _that_ difficult to bust himself out—and when he leaves with Lorelei, it suits Loki just fine. They would only get in his way, more likely than not. Besides, Sigurd has gone without fucking anybody for a _whole week_ now, and Lorelei is as good a partner as anybody.

So Loki, too, feels pleased with the way everything has worked out, and he wanders the halls of the All-Mother’s dungeons with a cheerful curiosity. Everything seems to be coming up Loki.

Which means, of course, because this is _Loki’s_ life, that everything must then completely fall apart.

\---

 

_hey_

_you around?_

Loki stares at the texts, debating, but before he can think of a reply, Sigurd makes his intentions clear.

_come over?_

_no thanks_ , Loki texts back, pausing long enough to make it seem like he hasn’t been just sitting there staring morosely at his phone.

_oh so u r alive then. jeez. i was actually worried._

_come over._

_im tired_ , Loki tells him.

 _ill make it worth ur while_ , Sigurd says. _come on_. Then: _i want dat booty._

Loki scoffs and it turns into a laugh. A few days before the whole Mephisto misstep (before the rescue mission catastrophe, before he found out he is doomed), he had refused to go to Sigurd unless Sigurd said that exact thing. He hadn’t give in, so they hadn’t fucked that night. Sigurd’s loss.

Of course, right now Loki feels like he’s been fucked already. Every day feels like that recently.

 _gimme dat booty_ , Sigurd texts.

Loki sighs and sends, _ffs_ , and then he teleports to Sigurd’s door. He knocks, but Sigurd doesn’t answer, so he texts, _open ur fucking door u prick_.

Finally the door opens and Sigurd stands there in jeans and a muscle shirt that is frankly a little unfair, showing off the glowing skin of his arms in the orange California night. He doesn’t move to let Loki in and only stares at him for a moment, so Loki breaks the silence.

“You rang?” he asks, trying to insert as much sarcasm as he possibly can into every letter. He’s not sure how much he succeeds; he feels drained.

“You’ve been AWOL for weeks,” says Sigurd, finally stepping aside. “What happened?”

“I went adventuring with Thor,” says Loki, walking in. He heads straight to the couch without looking at Sigurd. “Good times. Turns out we have a sister. Imagine that.”

“So what was down there?” asks Sigurd. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

It’s exactly the wrong thing to ask, and Sigurd seems to realize it, because his face falls. Loki looks away and wonders what Sigurd saw and if he could still hide it. He steels himself and looks up with a smile.

“Anyway, I’m not dead,” he says, and spreads his hands. “Here’s proof.” He stands up from the couch. Coming here was a mistake. Totally sending the wrong message. He just… Verity was going to bed and then Sigurd texted… “I’m going home,” he says. “I’ll see you around.”

“Wait.” Sigurd crosses the room quickly and grabs his arm before he can teleport away. “Why did you even come over if you were just—”

“What about Lorelei?” asks Loki. “You two looked pretty cozy.”

“Are you jealous?”

Loki shrugs his arm out of Sigurd’s grip. “No.”

“Well, we’re not exclusive,” says Sigurd, eyeing him dubiously. “She made that pretty clear.”

Loki smirks. “She gave you the space talk, then?”

Sigurd laughs and reaches for him, and Loki lets him put his hands on his waist. “Come on,” Sigurd says quietly. “It’s been a while.”

“And you want _dat booty_?” murmurs Loki, resting his hands uncertainly on Sigurd’s arms.

“I want _dat booty_.”

Sigurd pulls Loki’s hips flush against his and leans in to kiss him, but Loki turns his head at the last second. Sigurd sighs.

“What?” he asks, exasperated.

“Nothing,” says Loki. “I just don’t feel like it.”

Sigurd doesn’t appear to care, because he moves to grind against Loki, and when Loki tries to push him away, he only holds on tighter.

“Come on,” he says. “Whatever’s going on, let me distract you.”

Loki finally looks up. There is an urgent hunger in Sigurd’s eyes, his pupils darker and wider than the sky, and Loki can feel his erection pressing against him. A distraction. That sounds like a good idea, actually. Much more effective than playing pointlessly with his phone.

“Yeah,” he whispers, and then he reaches up to grab Sigurd’s shoulders. “Yeah,” he says, more loudly and then he smashes their mouths together in an open-mouthed kiss, responding to the urgency in Sigurd’s eyes in kind, because yes, a _distraction_ , that’s what he needs.

Sigurd grips Loki’s ass to press their bodies closer together and then his hands move down to the backs of his thighs. He takes the hint and jumps up to wrap his legs around Sigurd, and Sigurd grips his thighs and turns to carry him to the bedroom, managing not to break the kiss until he stumbles a little and they hit the closed door. He grinds against Loki and grunts impatiently while Loki struggles with the doorknob behind him, and then he manages to turn it and the door swings open.

To his credit, Sigurd doesn’t so much as stumble again as he simply walks quickly to the bed to fall on it. Loki grunts as Sigurd’s weight falling on him knocks the wind out of him, and then Sigurd moves back to kneel on the edge of the bed. While Sigurd undoes his belt, Loki crawls backwards until he feels pillows, and he sits back against the headboard. Sigurd kicks his pants off, down to his boxers, and crawls over Loki’s legs until Loki can reach for his shirt and pull him in again for a kiss. Sigurd grabs Loki’s thighs and pulls him up to better grind against him and then his hands move up to push under Loki’s hoodie and shirt. Loki works his arms out of the hoodie and yanks it over his head while Sigurd pushes his shirt up and runs his thumbs over Loki’s nipples before leaning down to bite one. Loki hisses in surprise, and Sigurd chuckles.

“I thought you liked that,” he says with a grin.

“I hate you,” Loki sneers, digging his nails into Sigurd’s shoulder.

“Then you have all sorts of problems,” says Sigurd, undoing Loki’s pants and pulling them off. “You looked real pathetic at my door, you know.”

“I don’t want your pity,” he snarls.

“S’not pity. I’m horny as fuck.”

“So why not call your lovely paramour Lorelei?”

“She’s got business, she says,” says Sigurd. “And you’re easier than trying to woo a mortal for a night.”

Loki scowls and pushes him away. “What is _that_ supposed to mean?”

Sigurd rolls his eyes. “Come off it. You’re a slut. Own it. Now do you want me to fuck you until you can’t remember your own name or not?”

“ _I’m_ a slut? Who fucked Bor’s shieldmaidens, so that they cursed your name for an eternity?”

Sigurd glares at him. “I won’t apologize for that,” he growls. “It was as much their fault as it was mine. And for mentioning it, I’m going to make you _scream_ my name until you forget yours.”

Loki smirks and sits up to grab Sigurd by the shirt. “Promise?” he asks sweetly.

And he does, for a little while, forget. Sigurd thrusts into him, filling him up, making him something other than an empty vessel of Loki, but the illusion is broken when he looks up and notices Sigurd’s mirrored ceiling. He had forgotten about that, and he’s never had the chance to see because Sigurd has never fucked him on his back before. But now he can see Sigurd’s dark back and his own pale face in the darkness. Sigurd moves over him, blocking his body from view, and Loki realizes that maybe that’s all he is. An empty vessel into which others insert their ideas of what they want him to be, a story someone else is writing, a body someone else is fucking. His actions aren’t even his own. He annihilated his younger self, but it doesn’t even feel like he ever did, he’s convinced himself that it was someone else’s doing, someone else forcing his hand, someone else using him as a weapon.

_Boo hoo hoo! I’m not the baddie! I’m just a copy… Hoping to wash the blood off your hands onto mine…_

He doesn’t even know anymore.

“Are you even paying attention?”

Loki blinks. “Huh?”

Sigurd growls and stops. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What do you care?” Loki sneers, and he moves his hips a little. “Don’t stop.”

Sigurd sighs and picks up again. “You’re absolutely intolerable, I swear…”

Loki grunts his agreement and moves his hands from Sigurd’s shoulders to grab the back of his head and pull him down for a kiss. Anything to forget, to not think. To distract them both from the truth.

Sigurd quickens his pace and then they’re both breathing too hard to sustain the kiss. Sigurd buries his face in Loki’s neck and soon he’s whispering in Loki’s ear.

“Say it. Say my name.”

“Nng,” Loki protests.

“Say it, you fucking slut,” he growls, thrusting in and out hard.

Loki has to bite his lip to keep it from slipping out and eventually he bites down on Sigurd’s shoulder. Sigurd grunts out a protest, and Loki bites harder until Sigurd grabs his hair and yanks his head back.

“I’m gonna make you say it. Make you scream it.”

Loki moans wordlessly. The back of his head prickles with pain.

“I’ll touch you if you say it.”

That sounds fair, so Loki moans his name as loudly as he can manage through gasping breaths, and Sigurd actually does take Loki in his hand, which is a first, but he doesn’t do anything else. Tease.

“Again,” says Sigurd.

“Nng. Ssssigurd…”

“Don’t _hiss_ it, snake, _scream_ it,” says Sigurd, and he provides sufficient motivation as he begins to move his hand.

“ _Sigurd._ ”

“Again,” Sigurd commands, moving faster, pounding into Loki furiously and pumping his hand.

“ _Sigurd!_ ”

“Full title.”

Loki groans. Really? How _terribly_ narcissistic. Still, Loki obliges, moaning at the top of his lungs, “Sigurd, the Ever-Glorious!”

“And who are you?” Sigurd pants out.

“I—” Loki moans. Loki the Trickster. God of Mischief. God of Lies. God of Evil. A story someone else is writing, a vessel someone else is filling.

_Only you saw chains, Loki… We were at peace with fate…_

_I am the destiny you run from—but will never escape!_

“I don’t know anymore,” he whines, and Sigurd clearly doesn’t understand because he laughs.

“Then I guess I’m doing my job,” he says.

Loki bites him again and tries not to cry. He can hear the headboard hitting the wall as Sigurd vigorously fucks him—whether he likes it or not, just like everyone else in his life apparently—and to Loki it sounds like the ominous beat of a drum.

_Doom, doom, doom, doom…_

* * *

 

 

**III. LUST A PRIMA VISTA**

 

_The good news is I’m gonna keep you around,_

_because your lust is just convenient now._

\- The Spill Canvas

 

When Sigurd comes back into the bedroom, Loki is still lying on his bed, even though he should probably have made like a tree and gotten out of there while Sigurd was still feeling hospitable. So he isn’t surprised when Sigurd frowns at him, but before he can tell Loki that he’s worn out his welcome, Loki heads him off.

“I know, I’ll be out of here in a minute, just give me—”

“You can stay.”

Loki stares at him, and Sigurd shrugs and walks over to sit on the edge of the bed.

“No offense, but you look real messed up,” says Sigurd. “Can you even really teleport home at this point?”

Loki huffs. “You have failed, Sigurd. I am offended.”

“Too rough for you?”

“I _told_ you even before I arrived that I was tired,” Loki says irritably.

“So stay,” says Sigurd, turning and swinging his legs up onto the bed. He reaches down for the comforter and throws it over both of them and then he lies back with a sigh.

“Why, so you can tell me, ‘Good night, Loki, good fuck, sleep well, I’ll most likely kill you in the morning’?” says Loki with a smirk.

“No guarantees I won’t,” says Sigurd. “You’ll have to take your chances.” He turns onto his side to face away from Loki. “Stay or don’t stay. Whatever.”

“Maybe _I’ll_ kill _you_ ,” muses Loki, in case it hasn’t occurred to him.

Sigurd snorts. “Please. You can’t even stand, much less go find a weapon.”

He has a point, so Loki just hums thoughtfully and lies there, avoiding looking up at the mirrored ceilings again. He’s not sure he can handle his reflection right now; it’s part of the reason he covers most of his mirrors when Verity isn’t over. Well, that and it keeps the All-Mother from _Scry_ ping him. He really should go, but he also can’t bring himself to move. And not just because his ass is sore. He almost welcomes the notion of Sigurd killing him in his sleep.

“Well then,” says Sigurd after a minute or so, “good night, Loki, good fuck, sleep well, I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Loki chuckles and then falls silent and closes his eyes, sort of grateful for the first time that night that Sigurd fucked him so hard, because now he can fall asleep quickly without having to lie there and think and maybe without even dreaming.

\---

 

He wakes up in the morning in Sigurd’s bed, so it appears that Sigurd isn’t going to kill him yet.

Pity.

He lies there for a while. Sigurd isn’t there; he must have already gotten up. Should he leave? He isn’t sure, and before he can come to a decision, Sigurd walks in, wearing nothing but sweatpants.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he says, looking surprised. “And still here.”

Loki sighs. “All right, I’m going.”

“That is _so_ not what I meant,” says Sigurd, rolling his eyes and walking to his closet. “You got any plans today?”

Besides moping some more? No, _brooding_. Brooding is a much better word. Classier, sexier, less juvenile. “Not particularly.”

“Let’s do something, then,” says Sigurd, pulling out some clothes.

Loki sits up and raises an eyebrow. “ _Do_ something?”

“Yeah,” says Sigurd. “You ever been to Fisherman’s Wharf? They’ve got arcade games—modern stuff _and_ the Musée Mécanique. We can beat all the high scores and make children cry.”

Loki smiles. “Aww, Sig,” he says, “you _do_ know the way to a trickster’s heart.”

Sigurd turns to smirk at him and dumps a pile of clothes on the bed. “Well, let’s shower, get dressed, and go.”

The shower is fun, and Sigurd finds him some clothes that at least don’t make him look like he’s wearing his brother’s hand-me-downs, and then Sigurd gives him directions, and Loki teleports them to the wharf. They grab brunch, and Sigurd insists on making Loki try the clam chowder, which is definitely not as good as on the East coast, and Loki says so as they walk down the wharf.

“Tch. New Yorkers,” says Sigurd.

“Our delis are better, too.”

“All right, don’t push it.”

“And In-N-Out is overrated.”

Sigurd stops in his tracks, and Loki smothers a grin and keeps walking past him as though he hadn’t noticed.

“You take that back,” warns Sigurd. “Right now.”

Loki gleefully denies the request, and Sigurd threatens him all the way into the crowded Alcatraz souvenir shop. Loki buys a shirt that says _Keep Calm and Swim Fast_ to replace the one Sigurd let him borrow, and when he goes to the men’s room to change, Sigurd follows him in and even blows him, which is nice of him. On his way out, he buys Verity a DVD documentary and a “My friend escaped from Alcatraz and all I got was this stupid t-shirt” shirt, and then he pockets a pair of jailbird sunglasses, and Sigurd doesn’t notice until they’re on their way to the arcade.

“When did you buy those?” Sigurd demands, pointing at the black and white striped bird-shaped novelty glasses.

“I’m sorry, did you want a pair?”

“Did you _steal_ those?”

Loki tips the sunglasses down to look at Sigurd over them. “Sigurd, they’re profiting off whimsical displays of America’s corrupt prison system and others’ misery within that system. And I, in turn, shall profit off _their_ misery. It’s not _theft_ ; it’s _justice_.”

“It totally is still theft.”

“I _did_ buy two shirts. And I _knew_ it, you _are_ jealous. I’ll go back and swipe a pair for you,” he says, turning around.

“No, don’t,” says Sigurd, laughing and catching Loki around the waist to stop him. He steers Loki back around and continues toward the arcade. “Seriously, don’t. No more stealing.”

“Spoil sport.”

“Sticky-fingered delinquent.”

“Guy who blew me in the bathroom. You know _that’s_ illegal, too, right?”

Sigurd wisely chooses not to say anything further on the matter. It’s not until they reach the arcade that Loki realizes Sigurd never removed his arm from around his waist.

They play through the antique arcade games. Sigurd sucks at pinball, but he gets the better fortune from the fortuneteller, which doesn’t surprise Loki at all. Sigurd wins the boxing game, but Loki beats him at every racing game and brags smugly about getting “Tempting” on the Sex Appeal Meter while Sigurd only gets “Overrated.” They work together at Whac-A-Mole, but Sigurd holds back because he’s afraid they’ll break it, so they don’t beat the high score. Not on that game, anyway. Pacman players everywhere would weep upon seeing Loki’s score. He takes a selfie with the machine, jutting a thumb at his high score, and sends it to Verity, who replies a few minutes later with “ _where are you??_ ”

The Skeeball machines are very popular—apparently because they actually dispense tickets for prizes. Sigurd plays a couple rounds when one of the machines is free and doesn’t catch Loki enchanting the balls to miss every third throw until his third game, and then he pauses to yell at him. Loki just stands there grinning with his hands behind his back, and when Sigurd turns back to play a fourth game, someone else has taken the machine.

Despite Loki’s meddling, Sigurd wins a lot of tickets, so they go to the prize counter, but while Loki is considering the prizes, Sigurd gives all of his tickets to a little girl.

“What are you doing?” Loki demands indignantly. “You told me we were going to make children _cry_ , not give them free stuff.”

Sigurd scoffs. “You seriously want one of those prizes?”

“I was eyeing that pink unicorn.” It’s _huge_ and probably wouldn’t fit through his door without some trouble, but it’s also hilarious and he thinks Verity might find it funny. He likes making her laugh, rare as her mirth is. The way her eyes light up makes _him_ feel lighter somehow.

Sigurd frowns. “What do _you_ want with a pink unicorn?” he asks, hands on his hips.

Loki shrugs. “I could use it as a practice dummy with Gram. Unicorns are terribly snobby creatures. It would be therapeutic.”

“I think it’s better off with that little girl,” says Sigurd, and he rolls his eyes when Loki crosses his arms and pouts. “Come on,” he says, taking Loki’s elbow. “I see DDR over there. I’m pretty sure that’s new.”

It is, and there’s a line, but there are only two pairs ahead of them, so they wait. Loki considers tripping the others up to speed up their turns, but Sigurd catches the twitch of his fingers and grabs his hand.

“No,” he says.

“But—”

“No,” he says again firmly. Loki yanks his hand away and crosses his arms, but he doesn’t make another attempt. He probably shouldn’t be expending magic for such things anyway.

When it’s finally their turn, Loki huffs impatiently, and Sigurd gestures to the machine with a sarcastic bow.

“Your Highness,” he says.

“Shut up,” Loki snaps, stepping up onto the machine.

Sigurd slips a few quarters into the slots. “Patience is a virtue, you know.”

“I don’t have any of those,” says Loki, scrolling through the songs. “And we’re not Judeo-Christian deities. Our moral standards revolve around smashing things with hammers and how quickly we can devour entire swine.”

Sigurd laughs, and Loki gives up scrolling and selects the random option. He chooses the highest difficulty, and Sigurd groans.

“Seriously, man?” he says.

Loki raises an eyebrow in challenge, and Sigurd grumbles under his breath and moves his difficulty level up.

“All right, Fancy Feet,” mutters Sigurd.

They do well enough on the first song that the machine gives them another round, and halfway through, Loki grabs Sigurd’s arm and tugs.

“What?”

“Switch!”

He jumps behind Sigurd, and Sigurd moves to take over Loki’s side. It takes him a while to notice that Loki is standing in place, tapping the arrows with his foot at random until the machine is shouting “Boo!” rather loudly.

“Are you messing up my score?” Sigurd demands, and when Loki snickers, he reaches over to push Loki off the machine and jumps back onto his side to try to fix what Loki’s done. Loki swings himself over the bar back to his side and they finish the song, though they technically fail. Loki’s score is high enough to place on the ranking’s list, so he gets to enter his name, but Sigurd keeps tapping Loki’s arrows to mess it up. Loki laughs and tries to push him away so he can enter “ _FOX”_ properly, but Sigurd taps in “ _DP?”_ before Loki can stop him. When Loki shoves him, laughing, Sigurd pulls him off the machine and Loki falls. Sigurd catches him and pushes him toward the arcade’s exit, hand on the small of his back, and they both stumble out laughing into the late afternoon sun.

They head back toward the shopping area, and as they walk, Loki’s phone vibrates in his pocket.

It’s another text from Verity: _We still on for tomorrow?_

 _yup_ , he replies.

_Good. I was worried you were stuck in 1985._

_close_. _that was a machine from 1982. do u want it?_

_What, are you at an antique auction?_

_no an arcade._

_Don’t steal anything!_

He chuckles. _u guys rly r no fun._

“Who are you texting?” asks Sigurd.

“Verity,” he says, slipping his phone away.

“That cute redhead? Are you guys fucking yet?”

Loki grins at him. “Jealous, are we?” Sigurd shoves him, and he laughs. “That’s not the sort of friendship we have.”

“So she’s available.”

“Yes, and she can also smell bullshit from a mile away,” Loki reminds him. “Perhaps you ought to stick to only one fiery-headed woman. You wouldn’t want to be greedy.”

“Nah, I’m going for a record.”

Loki thinks about bringing up the slut comment from last night, but they’re having such a nice time and he doesn’t want to chance ruining it. And then a thought occurs to him and he realizes it’s been bothering him all day.

“Sigurd.”

Sigurd leans against the wooden railing of the wharf and looks out over the water. “Hmm?”

The sun is getting low in the sky, turning everything pink and orange, and Sigurd looks beautiful and… _heroic_ against the water like that. Loki thinks of his dark body glowing in the lights shining in from the window and how sickly and pale Loki himself looks in that light and wonders. He hesitates, but then, he could always backtrack by teasing. Still, the question comes out much less playful than he means.

“Was this a date?”

Sigurd doesn’t move and Loki stands behind him and waits. Then Sigurd turns.

“It could be,” he says at last, which is exactly the sort of noncommittal answer Loki _didn’t_ expect from him. “What do you think?”

Loki stares at him. No. No, that’s…

“I think you’re a fool,” he tells Sigurd. “I think that’s a terrible idea.”

Sigurd blinks, taken aback—what an _idiot_ —and then he frowns. “What—”

“What _are_ you _doing_?” asks Loki, taking a step back. “It’s bad enough that we’re fucking. Sigurd, you—You’re a hero of Asgard. Her first hero. And I?” He scoffs out a laugh. “I’m her greatest enemy.”

“Some might argue that the Serpent is Asgard’s worst enemy,” says Sigurd, watching him carefully, a small crease between his eyebrows.

Loki shrugs. “And I managed to free him recently. So really, who’s worse?”

Sigurd freezes and the crease deepens. “Wait, what? When?”

“With Thor.” Loki shoves his hands into his pockets. “Odin’s come back and with him, Cul. You really ought to keep up with current events, Sigurd.”

Sigurd stares at him and then shakes his head as though to clear it and steps toward Loki. “All right, but so what? You aren’t so bad these days.”

 _I’m not the fool who thinks he can ever be anything new_.

“What if I am?” Loki says.

“You seem all right to me.”

“ _Why?_ ” he asks incredulously. “Why do you trust me?”

“Oh, I don’t,” says Sigurd, stepping forward, and Loki has to force himself not to take another step back in retreat. “I know this could totally end up biting me in the ass. But you held up your end of the deal, and honestly? I didn’t expect you to. The old Loki wouldn’t have—”

“Maybe this is all part of my plan to _really_ put you away,” says Loki. He won’t hear any more talk of the _old_ Loki. “Maybe I’m using you, and when I’m finished—” Sigurd reaches for him, and Loki pushes his arms away. “When I’m finished—”

“If any of that was true, you wouldn’t be telling me,” Sigurd points out.

Loki scowls, frustrated. “You really don’t get it.”

“No, I get it,” says Sigurd, grabbing Loki’s arms, but gently. “I just don’t care.”

Loki stares at him, leaning away from him. “You’re a fool,” he tells him again.

Sigurd smirks. “Maybe,” he says, pulling Loki closer. “But it’s more fun when it’s dangerous, isn’t it?”

Well. Loki can’t argue with that.

“So… what?” asks Loki. “What are we doing?”

Sigurd shrugs, still holding Loki in place. “We don’t have to put a label on it. Nothing has to change. You just seemed upset, and I was bored, and your kept promise to rescue me has endeared you to me somewhat.”

Loki frowns. “What, you _like_ me now?”

“Hel no,” Sigurd says with a scoff, and he finally lets Loki go. “You’re still an asshole. I _tolerate_ you at most.” He pauses and leans against the railing behind him again. “So?” he prompts.

Loki shakes his head. “You’re a damned fool.”

Sigurd chuckles. “All right. But you’ll still come back with me tonight, right?”

“I have plans tomorrow with Verity.”

“But tonight?”

Loki smirks. “You know, it occurs to me that this might be a plan of _yours_ to kill _me_.”

Sigurd rolls his eyes. “ _I’m_ not a treacherous snake.”

“You’re letting _this_ treacherous snake into your bed. I’ve heard warnings about doing so.”

“I’ll just have to watch my back,” says Sigurd. “Besides, you seem a decent fellow; I hate to kill you.”

Loki laughs. “You seem a decent fellow; I hate to die.”

Sigurd slings an arm over his shoulder. “Maybe _la petite mort_?”

Loki looks at him slyly. “ _Peut-être_.”

\---

 

“Sigurd. She’ll be here any minute. Hurry up.”

“Almost… there…” Sigurd grunts.

Almost isn’t close enough, but Sigurd does begin to move faster. Loki presses his hands against the tiles of the shower wall to keep from slipping. Morning-after shower sex _seemed_ like a good idea at the time… And then Sigurd shifts to try another angle and Loki moans, and okay, it _was_ a good idea. He bows his head and feels the water gliding down his back to where their bodies meet and slap against each other and the slight change in position makes Sigurd groan and then he comes. He sighs loudly and leans over Loki’s back, resting his head between Loki’s shoulder blades, and Loki lets him take a second to rest in the afterglow of his apparently amazing orgasm, but then he _really_ doesn’t have time for this.

“Okay, we seriously have to get out,” he says. “So, you know, get out.”

Sigurd huffs. “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he grumbles, but he pulls out and takes his weight off Loki, which means Loki can finally take his hand off the wall to take care of himself. Sigurd takes a step back and then with a cry and a thump, he slips and falls behind Loki.

Loki bursts out laughing but doesn’t turn around because he’s so close…

“Ow, fuck,” Sigurd says. “What did you do that for?”

“I swear, I didn’t,” he says, laughing breathlessly.

“Are you still—?”

“Yeah.”

“And you were telling _me_ to hurry up,” grumbles Sigurd, and he grabs Loki’s hip and turns him around to kneel before him and wrap his lips around him. Loki lets Sigurd do the work for a while, throwing his head back and groaning, but it’s taking too long and he’s _so damn close_ , so he grabs Sigurd’s hair and enthusiastically fucks his mouth.

It doesn’t take him much longer to come, too, and then they quickly get clean. While Sigurd gets dressed, Loki tidies up the apartment for Verity’s imminent arrival, wiping down the kitchen table, Febrezing the couch, and shoving dirty clothes and miscellaneous sex toys under the bed. He checks his phone and requests her ETA, and she sends back _15 mins, see you soon_. Sigurd comes up behind him while he’s messaging her back and wraps his arms around him, but Loki pushes him away.

“All right, get out,” he says. “Verity will be here soon.”

“Portal,” says Sigurd.

“I gave you one yesterday!”

“No,” says Sigurd. “I want to play. You said I could continue my game, but we got distracted last night…”

Loki huffs. “Get your own PlayStation.”

“Just until she gets here,” says Sigurd, waving his hand. “Then I’ll get out of here and let you guys have your little date or whatever.”

And that’s how, when Verity comes up to Loki’s apartment, she finds them sitting on the couch playing through a particularly tough puzzle.

“No, shoot it over there—Hi, Verity,” Loki says as she comes through the door.

She pauses upon seeing Sigurd and frowns slightly, but only for a moment. “Hey,” she says, dropping her purse by the door and shrugging out of her jacket. “What are you guys doing?”

“Well, Sigurd is failing his way through Portal—See? You died again. Go the _other_ way—and I’m _starving_.” He stands up from the couch to greet her properly and take her jacket. He drapes it over a chair, because Sigurd broke his coat rack last week.

“Let’s do lunch then,” says Verity. “Hi, Sigurd.”

“Hey,” Sigurd grunts, eyes focused on the screen, and Loki walks over and takes the controller away from him.

“All right, out,” he says, closing the game. “Go think with portals elsewhere. Perhaps all the way to San Francisco.”

“Fine,” says Sigurd, rising to his feet. “Hey, Verity.”

She smiles uncertainly. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah. I’ve been enjoying my time out of prison,” he says with a casual grin. “How’ve you been?”

Verity shrugs. “Good.”

Loki has had quite enough of their awkward small talk, so he goes to the door and opens it. “Sigurd,” he announces, “get the fuck out of my apartment.”

He feels entirely too satisfied by saying it, and by the look on Sigurd’s face, he knows it, but he doesn’t argue and walks past Loki through the door. He turns around one last time to smirk at Loki.

“As you wish,” he says.

Loki smiles sweetly at him and then slams the door in his face.

“Ugh, thank the Norns,” Loki groans, turning back to walk to the couch. “I thought he’d _never_ leave.”

“I didn’t think you guys hung out much,” says Verity, sitting next to him on the couch while he turns off the PlayStation properly.

“Well, when you’ve got a PS3, apparently _everyone_ wants to be your friend,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I should have bought one _ages_ ago.” He sets the controller aside and turns to her, and then he blinks in surprise. She is frowning at him and as she watches him carefully, she slowly leans forward, her head tilting a little.

“What?” he asks, leaning away from her. Did he lie about something?

Verity only scrutinizes him more and then she gasps softly, her mouth falling open.

“Are you guys _fucking_?” she asks in an incredulous whisper.

Ah. “Not currently,” says Loki, raising an eyebrow. “That would be rude, you being in the room and all, and rather impossible, seeing as he’s not here—”

“You _know_ that’s not what I meant,” she says, rolling her eyes.

He smirks, considers his options, and gives up. “For a while now.”

“ _What?_ ” She stares at him in open-mouthed shock. “But you don’t even like each other!”

He clicks his tongue and smiles at her. “Oh, sweet, innocent Verity,” he says, reaching out to pat her hand. “Two people don’t have to _like_ each other to fuck.”

She gives him an unamused look in response to his condescension. “You said Sigurd was with Lorelei.”

“Well, I never said he was _only_ fucking Lorelei.”

Verity frowns at him, clearly frustrated. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

Why would he? “You… never asked,” he says, confused.

She purses her lips thoughtfully. “How long?”

He thinks back to the first time and realizes he has to tread carefully. He doesn’t really want this to lead to a discussion about the Asgardia job… which, as far as Verity knows, was only a rescue mission. Considering how it all turned out… No, he really does not want to talk about _that_.

“Maybe a week after he kicked me out the window?” he says, rubbing his chin.

Verity snorts. “Oh yeah. Someone attempting murder is always a turn on,” she says.

“Ah, for you, too?” he says brightly, and she laughs and shoves him.

“Okay, but seriously,” she says. “What’s going on?”

He shrugs. “Nothing,” he says, and when she frowns at him, he sighs. “I’m sorry, did you want all the tawdry details of my torrid love affair? I hate to offend your delicate sensibilities, my dear, but there’s nothing to tell. It’s only about the sex.”

The frown she gives him is the disapproving one, the one with pursed lips and that concerned crease between her eyebrows, the one she uses when he lies.

“That’s not entirely true, is it?” she says.

She’s right, but even he isn’t sure exactly what it is aside from the sex itself that he keeps coming back to Sigurd for. He looks away and considers it, but part of the point of the whole thing is that he doesn’t _have_ to think.

“What do you want from me, Verity?” he says, throwing his hands up. “I don’t _know_. We’re just… blowing off steam.”

Her disapproval intensifies. “Okay, look,” she says, “I get casual sex, and that’s fine, but… He tried to _kill_ you. This doesn’t seem entirely… good for you.”

Loki looks down and picks at his nail polish for a while before he speaks again. “Maybe… it’s not about what’s good for me,” he says slowly. “Maybe it’s just what I need right now.”

She puts her hand over his and when he meets her eyes, she smiles sadly.

“Okay,” she says, and then she suddenly leans forward, determination in her eyes. “But if it gets bad, you get out.”

Loki chuckles. “I can take care of myself.”

“You clearly can’t.” She smiles. “Just please tell me he isn’t going to throw you out any more windows.”

Loki smirks. “I don’t think he will. He likes _dat booty_ too much.” Verity laughs. “Out of curiosity,” he says, “how did you know?”

She hums and sits backs. “Well,” she says, “there was the hostile, yet weirdly flirty, good-bye. And when I came in, you guys were sitting really close together.”

“We were?”

She nods. “I think your thighs were touching.” He hums thoughtfully and she continues: “There was one more clue.”

“Which was?”

She reaches out and tucks his hair behind his ear and smirks. “Sigurd’s hair was still wet, too.”

Loki stares at her for a moment and then laughs. “Well, Verity, your powers of deduction are truly remarkable,” he says. “Are you _sure_ Truthseeing is your only power?”

She smirks. “Maybe this is just part of the ‘Truthseeing,’” she says, flashing air-quotes.

“Perhaps.” Loki stands and claps his hands together. “Right, well, lunch? I thought we might try to make pita sandwiches. I have all this leftover meat. It’ll be like gyros.”

“Sounds great,” says Verity, rising from the couch as well. “But you’re still going to tell me all about it.”

“About Mediterranean food?”

“About Sigurd.”

Loki raises an eyebrow. “What, you _do_ want the tawdry details?”

She shrugs. “I’ve hit a dry spell. I have to live vicariously through you.”

He laughs. “So _you_ , a (as far as I know) heterosexual woman, want to live vicariously through _my_ ,” he says, gesturing to himself, “gay sex. Are you going to get off on this later?”

“Don’t be crude. I caught you guys hanging out today. There’s gotta be more where that came from. And also, yes,” she adds, “I am curious about the sex. But no intimate details, please.”

“I shall spare your delicate heterosexual sensibilities.”

“Heterosexual, as far as you know.”

They smirk at each other.

“I propose a trade,” he says. “A story for a story.”

Verity wrinkles her nose. “All I have is old stories.”

“And I would hear them,” says Loki, leading the way to the kitchen. “Former boyfriends, girlfriends, and all in between.”

She eventually agrees, so while they assemble and then eat pita sandwiches, they trade current and past relationship stories. It takes Verity a while to realize Loki is only giving snippets while she summarizes entire relationships. When she expresses irritation and shuts down, Loki makes up for it by telling her (probably in more detail than she wants) about the threesome they had with Lorelei two weekends ago.

It’s actually rather nice to talk about it.

* * *

 

 

**IV. LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE**

 

_Just gonna stand there and watch me burn,_

_but that’s all right because I like the way it hurts._

\- Eminem, feat. Rihanna

 

They’ve gotten into the habit of sort of just falling into each other, so Sigurd doesn’t bother to text Loki before heading over. If he’s home, then of _course_ they’ll fuck, even if it’s only a quickie before Loki has to dash away to do whatever he does these days. If he’s out, then whatever, Sigurd can find something (or someone) else to do while he’s in Manhattan.

He follows someone into the building and when he reaches Loki’s apartment, he knocks and then leans with one hand against the wall to make the porniest pose he can think of.

The door opens, and Sigurd is about to say something like “I’ve got a package for you” or “I heard you were a plumber and could help me with my backed up pipe,” but he falters upon seeing a surprised Loki in female form. It’s just unexpected enough that he loses his quip on its way to his tongue, but not enough to sway his purpose. It wouldn’t be the first time they fucked with Loki in female form, after all.

Regardless, they stare at each other in mutual surprise for a few seconds until Loki purses her lips.

“What do you want?” says Loki, looking somewhat irritated. “We’re having a girls’ night.”

Sigurd looks her (he guesses) up and down. “I can see that.”

Loki rolls her eyes and opens the door wider to reveal Verity sitting on the couch. “That wasn’t the royal we,” says Loki.

Sigurd shrugs. “I can never tell with you. Hey, Verity.”

“Hey, Sigurd,” she says, but she doesn’t move to get up and Sigurd sees that she has pink toe separators on one foot. Loki wasn’t kidding about girls’ night.

“I, uh,” he begins, quickly dropping the pose. “Sorry if I’m interrupting anything. I just needed to…” Ah, shit, but he can’t lie to Verity. Man, maybe he _should_ have called ahead.

“It’s okay, Sigurd, she knows,” says Loki.

Sigurd blinks, surprised, and Loki shrugs. Guess there really is no keeping anything from Verity then.

“Right,” says Sigurd. “Then, uh, sorry. I guess I’ll leave you to it.”

“Why don’t you come in for a little while?” says Verity, and Loki shoots her a sharp look that she doesn’t bother trying to hide from Sigurd. Verity shrugs and they have a short, silent conversation consisting of impatient gestures and pursed lips, and then Loki turns back to Sigurd.

“Excuse us a moment,” she says, and then she closes the door.

Sigurd waits, considers leaving, and then presses his ear to the door curiously. He can’t hear anything; Loki probably sound-proofed the apartment with a spell or something. Which explains why Loki’s always so _loud_ when they do it here.

Finally the door opens again and Loki glowers at him.

“You may stay for a short while,” she says sullenly, “and then you must leave so we can continue having our girls’ night.”

“Sounds fair,” says Sigurd, and Loki steps aside to let him in.

“I should warn you,” says Loki, “we’re going to paint each other’s nails and talk about boys—”

“No we’re not,” Verity assures Sigurd.

“—So deal with it,” continues Loki, shooting another look at Verity.

“I can talk about boys,” says Sigurd. “You’re a boy, sometimes.”

“And I’m painting your nails, too,” Loki declares haughtily. “And I get to choose the color.”

Sigurd rolls his eyes at her and drops onto the other end of the couch. Loki sniffs and goes to the kitchen.

“So… girls’ night?” he asks Verity.

She nods and adjusts the toe separator. “She claims it’s the best cure for a bad day. She’s full of shit,” she adds in a whisper. “Vodka. Vodka is the best cure for a bad day.”

Sigurd laughs. “You had a bad day?”

“Just a headache-y one. It’s okay.”

Loki comes back and offers Sigurd a beer, which he sets aside because Loki always shakes up beers before giving them to him. She sits next to Verity and opens a bottle of forest green nail polish while Verity sits back and puts her foot in Loki’s lap. Two of her toes are already painted green and Loki begins to apply polish to the other toes.

“So anyway, this swimmer with the mile-wide shoulders,” says Loki.

“I already told you about him,” says Verity, taking a sip of her own beer. “Are we really going to talk about boys?”

“ _Yes_.”

Sigurd laughs. “No need to change the topic of conversation on my account.”

“You know what Bessie Smith says about swimmers?” asks Loki, ignoring him.

“What?” asks Verity.

“They’ve got a stroke that can’t go wrong, and they can _staaay at the bottom and their wind holds out so long_ ,” says Loki, crooning the last half, and Verity laughs.

“That’s deep sea divers,” says Sigurd.

“Sigurd here is only a snorkeler,” Loki tells Verity.

“Hey…”

Loki finishes off Verity’s toes and Verity turns to put her feet on the ground to dry safely. There are dozens of nail polish bottles littering the coffee table, next to two empty pizza boxes, and Loki sifts through them and then turns to Sigurd.

“Your hand,” she says. Sigurd hesitates but then holds out his hand and she takes it and turns it to apply what turns out to be purple polish with tiny pink stars.

“Oh jeez…” says Sigurd, and Verity laughs. Loki fails to smother a smirk. “Why do you even have this kind?”

“It’s not mine,” says Loki defensively. “Verity brought over her own collection.”

“Because you lack anything that isn’t black,” says Verity, and she leans over to look at Sigurd. “Sigurd, Loki has no less than twenty-seven different bottles of black polish. And those are just the ones we could _find_.”

“I keep forgetting if I’m out!”

“Assume you’re _not_.”

“And then there’s the matter of finding the bottles…”

“So don’t just throw them in random places! We found three in your silverware drawer, for crying out loud.”

Sigurd opens his beer with his free hand and sits back to listen, grinning. Loki is liveliest with Verity. It’s sort of fun to watch. As he sits there for about an hour before Loki kicks him out, just talking about random things, Sigurd thinks that maybe in moments like these, and like their day at Fisherman’s Wharf a few weeks ago, he doesn’t completely hate Loki. Hel, he might be even starting to _like_ Loki. Maybe he already does. Other than being annoyingly sarcastic and occasionally arrogant and condescending, Loki isn’t so bad. Sigurd even considers him a friend, albeit an untrustworthy one. But they have fun.

Of course, that doesn’t last very long.

\---

 

Sigurd is sitting on his porch stripping the sandy wax off his surfboard when _he_ shows up in his stupid new costume. He’s still a little pissed for what he said to Verity a few days ago. Of all the stupid dick moves Loki has pulled, _that_ one somehow seems the worst. How it’s worse than the time Loki brought about Asgard’s _literal_ fall from grace, Sigurd wouldn’t be able to put into words. Maybe it’s because Sigurd wasn’t in Asgardia at the time and over the last month he’s grown fond of Verity.

Whatever it is, he definitely doesn’t want to see Loki right now. But there he is, standing on Sigurd’s walkway in his stupid white get-up. He looks more like a boy band member than ever. Sigurd wants to punch him in his stupid smug face.

“I didn’t know you surfed,” says Loki. “I suppose you really are a true Californian.”

“And you’re a true New Yorker,” Sigurd retorts. “Thinking you’re better than everyone else.”

Loki frowns. “It’s not a matter of being _better_ —”

Sigurd cuts him off with a scoff and scrapes another strip of wax off. “Yeah, okay,” he says. “So out with it. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to offer you one more chance to join Amora and me,” says Loki. “I realize that Lorelei might have pressured you into refusing us because of her less-than-amicable feelings toward her sister, and I wanted to give you a chance to answer on your own terms.”

Sigurd stares at him and then sets his board aside and stands up. Loki watches him expectantly. Sigurd hates this new Loki. He didn’t think it was possible to hate someone this much. If he thought he hated Loki _before_ … Well, now that feels like sweet affection in comparison.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sigurd tells him, and he turns away to go into his house. When he comes back out with a beer, Loki is gone. Well, at least the new Loki knows when he’s not wanted. Or maybe he just has “responsibilities” and can’t be bothered to keep up his relationships. Whatever.

He’s finished with his surfboard and has gone back inside when Lorelei texts him. It’s a bit of a surprise, because they fought a little about the fact that Sigurd called her his girlfriend back at Loki’s apartment.

 _I have a proposition for you_ , her text reads.

 _what?_ he asks.

_a date with the double d’s: danger and dollars. ;)_

_and you?_

_I’m open to a foursome_ , she replies, and then there’s a knock at his door. Lorelei is standing on his step with a deceivingly small bag hanging from her shoulder.

“Am I wrong in assuming you’ve run through Loki’s money already?” she asks.

“I’m not as predisposed to a life of luxury as you are,” he says, stepping aside to let her in. “But I’m intrigued. What do you have in mind?”

“Well…”

There is a bank in Manhattan she has been casing and she needs additional firepower to complete the job. As she describes their explosive break-in, Sigurd laughs.

“Who are we, Bonnie and Clyde?” he asks.

“Only bulletproof,” she says. “I do not intend to end like they did. Are you in?”

Never one to turn down a bit of action, Sigurd agrees, and Lorelei stays to go over the plan. She only gets halfway through before they take a break to fuck. Lorelei is fun in all the ways Loki isn’t. Where Loki whines and complains, Lorelei moans and responds. Lorelei is a woman who knows what she wants and how to get it, and she _tells_ Sigurd. It’s sexy and somehow, even though it’s Lorelei, Sigurd feels less like he’s being used and more like a greater part of what they’re doing. He’s not even really sure why he was fucking Loki in the first place, or why he even misses it now, because he does, but he has no idea why.

“I don’t usually mix business with pleasure,” says Lorelei with a sigh next to him. “Not without the instant gratification factor anyway.”

“What, you _didn’t_ get gratification from that?”

Lorelei chuckles, the sound coming from deep in her chest, like a moan, and she turns over to drape herself over his side. “I was talking about money,” she says. “But what I mean to say is that I’m glad I decided to come over, rather than just telling you the plan over the phone.”

Sigurd smirks. “Oh, well, me too.” He hesitates. “I, uh, thought you might still be upset.”

She traces swirls on his chest with a finger absently. “I don’t like to be tied down.”

“I didn’t mean to do so,” he says, taking her hand. “I just… really like you.”

She smirks up at him. “That’s fine. Just know that I belong to no one.”

“Fair enough,” he says, and she props herself up on an elbow to kiss him. When she pulls away, she smiles slyly down at him.

“I thought you might understand,” she says. “After all, Sigurd the Ever-Glorious is not known for his _fidelity_.”

“Well, you _are_ the only one I’m fucking right now,” he admits, because he hasn’t gone out and picked up anybody since Loki found him in that bar, and then he thinks of Loki and Amora. “What are we going to do about him?” he murmurs.

Lorelei scoffs and drops back down to his side. “ _We?_ You were the one getting involved with him. I did warn you.”

“I can’t believe what he said to Verity,” says Sigurd, rubbing a hand over his mouth.

Lorelei hums in agreement. “The poor ingénue.”

“Has she been in contact with you at all? She hasn’t been answering my messages.”

“I expect she’s just upset,” says Lorelei and then she curls her upper lip in a sneer. “Loki and my sister really did pull out all the stops to humiliate both of us.”

Sigurd turns onto his side and grabs her arm. “Hey, what Amora said? It’s not true,” he tells her firmly. “She’s _wrong_.”

Lorelei snorts. “Right. I mean, _obviously_ , I _do_ bathe after every rut—”

Sigurd shushes her and kisses her and she reaches up to hold him tightly. She sniffs and pulls away slightly and then huffs out a laugh.

“Norns,” she says. “What a bitch.”

“Forget her,” says Sigurd, reaching up to brush a thumb over her cheek. “Forget both of them.”

She smiles at him. “Good idea,” she says, and she pushes him over onto his back and climbs on top of him. “After all, they will only break your heart,” she whispers.

\---

 

Verity does finally text Sigurd back and agrees to meet him for lunch in Manhattan. He’s in town anyway for Lorelei’s heist the next night and Verity is cool. Though when she arrives at the diner, she mostly just looks sad. Sigurd gets up and tries to pull out her chair for her, but she stops him.

“Cut the chivalry crap, please,” she says, rubbing her temples. “I’m really not interested in being subject to anyone else’s idea of courtesy right now.”

“If it helps, I wasn’t thinking of chivalry,” Sigurd tells her. “Something shitty happened to you, and I just want to make sure you’re comfortable.”

She tentatively smiles at him. “Thank you,” she says after a moment, and then she lets him finish pulling out her chair. “I’m sorry I was ignoring your texts,” she says when they’re both seated. “It’s been pretty crazy here, and I went to stay with my mom for a few days.”

On his way to New York, Sigurd heard some crazy things about the Avengers and the X-Men. But they are _always_ fighting, so he ignored it.

“Things have gotten way out of hand,” he says. Verity nods and looks down, and Sigurd leans forward. “Hey, I’m really sorry he said that.”

“ _You_ don’t have to be sorry,” she mutters.

“Yeah, but I am,” he says. “He was the God of Evil for a reason. I guess it’s because he is an evil, two-faced bastard.”

“Sigurd…” Verity puts her face in her hands.

“Sorry,” he says after a while, suddenly feeling very ashamed that he had ever slept with Loki. Now he knows that had been a mistake. Lorelei, for all her criminal activity, had never been _evil_. She is definitely the more stable option, if there is one.

“Do you miss him, too?” Verity whispers.

Last night Sigurd thought he did. Now he isn’t so sure. “The guy’s a mess,” he says. “I’m not sure there’s much for me to miss.”

Verity looks up at him and he wonders if what he just said is a lie and if she’ll call him on it, which would be great, actually, because it would clear up a few things. But she just watches him for a moment and then she snorts in an attempt to smother a laugh.

“What?” he demands, and she giggles. “ _What_?”

She coughs a little. “ _Dat booty_ ,” she says.

He stares at her and she giggles, and then he laughs, too.

“That asshole,” he says, shaking his head. “Fine, he’s a _hot_ mess. I’m not sure I need that shit in my life.”

Verity’s giggles die down and she turns her water glass around.

“I do,” she says quietly.

Sigurd doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just reaches out to cover her hand with his, and when she looks up, he smiles sadly at her. She returns it and looks away again.

“I don’t know what I expected,” she says. “After you told me about the Asgardia break-in, I accused him of not treating me like a human being. I guess even after that, I never thought he would _actually_ treat me like trash.”

Sigurd shrugs and sits back. He remembers that day at Fisherman’s Wharf and Loki’s insistence that Sigurd was making a mistake and how he hadn’t believed him. Or maybe he had just been hoping, for whatever reason, that Loki was all right. That their tryst could be something more, that Sigurd didn’t have to hide amongst Midgardians and could be himself and go on _real_ adventures, instead of just fighting fires and pretending they were something more.

“Well, I guess that makes us both fools,” he says.

* * *

 

 

**V. I MISS THE MISERY**

 

_I don’t miss you, I miss the misery._

\- Halestorm

 

Angela, it turns out, is Loki’s favorite sibling. As he runs through the now-emptied halls of Asgardia’s palace, he has to lament the fact that they hadn’t met before. Why couldn’t he have had _her_ for an older sibling rather than Thor and (ugh) Balder?

Well, she is here now and causing the perfect distraction—the kidnapping of Odin and Freyja’s latest spawn. Classic trickster-sibling work! Genius! Loki couldn’t have come up with a better way to throw Asgardia into a disorganized panic (short of making it fall from the sky again, but that had been _done_ already, _bo-ring_ ), and he didn’t, so he was glad when Angela took the child and fled. (Well, a little dismayed, too, but mostly amused and grateful. Perhaps he should send her a gift basket.)

As he nears Odin’s hall, where Lorelei and Sigurd wait, trapped in goose eggs, Loki pulls out his phone and dials Verity.

“I swear, sometimes I just can’t hate the fact that I have overdramatic siblings,” he tells her by way of greeting.

“Like you aren’t the biggest drama queen of them all,” says Verity. “Are you in?”

“Didn’t even have to lift a finger,” he says, peeking around a corner where a guard _should_ be, but isn’t. “Did I tell you about Angela? She kidnapped the baby. It’s caused the most delightful distraction. I think she’s my new favorite. Angela, not the baby. Can’t stand babies…”

“Do you need me?”

 _Always_. “Don’t know yet,” he says, running for the door to Odin’s hall. He pushes the door open slowly, one hand still holding the phone to his ear. “I’ll let you know when I—Ah.”

When he undertook this rescue mission, it occurred to him how funny it was that he was rescuing Sigurd yet again, and then how unsettling it was that each time was his fault. Well, sort of. He _could_ try to blame Amora, but ever since the inversion he seemed somehow unable to lie. And the truth is, Lorelei and Sigurd’s imprisonment is _at least partially_ his fault.

( _Mostly his fault_ , whispers the truth-telling part of him, and he tells it to shut up for a second, because he’s trying to _do_ something, not get mired in self-hatred.)

So when Verity asked him what he was going to do, he was aware of some very uncomfortable truths. This is ( _partiallyMOSTLYshutup_ ) his fault. He has to fix it.

He might be bad for Sigurd.

“Okay,” Verity had said after he finished explaining the plan. “But how are you going to distract them?”

He shrugged. “I’ll figure something out. Blow up a tower or something.”

She frowned. “Let’s _not_ destroy public property.”

“Well, if you consider that I’m a prince of Asgard and occasionally third in line for the throne (depending on how disown-y the All-Parents are feeling), then it’s technically _my_ property—”

“No.”

He grinned at her. “Okay.”

She looked at him sternly over her glasses and then smirked. “Okay then,” she said. “Let’s go rescue your boyfriend.”

Loki scoffed and rolled his eyes. “He’s not my—”

But Verity was smirking at him with a raised eyebrow, and he stopped and glared at her.

“Whatever,” he sneered, giving up and looking up flights on his phone.

Of course, then the Warriors Three contacted him the next day—meaning they showed up on his roof and disturbed the neighbors enough to get his attention away from his PlayStation—and told him that Freyja was going into labor, so it turned out he didn’t need to sneak into Asgardia.

And now it turns out he doesn’t even need to distract everyone while he extracts Lorelei and Sigurd. It is an opportunist’s _dream_.

“Loki?” asks Verity tentatively.

“Found them,” he says, sliding into the room and silently closing the door behind him. “I’ll put you on video.”

He switches the camera on and holds up his phone to show her the hall.

“Whoa,” she says. “What the hell are those?”

“It depends,” Loki tells her. “What are you seeing?”

“Those don’t look like goose eggs.”

“Is there anything else?” He isn’t taking any chances that Odin set invisible traps.

“Uhh… A big chair?”

“Perfect. They’ll be out in no time then,” he says, switching the video feed off and putting the phone to his ear again as he starts across the floor. “I’ll call when we’re out of here.”

“Don’t leave me hanging this time,” she warns.

“You have my word.”

She disconnects, and Loki stows his phone away and approaches the goose eggs holding Lorelei and Sigurd. It’s lucky that Odin hasn’t found time to complete his crazy punishment yet— _I will seal them in caskets of bone and silver and bury them in the roots of dead trees on the Isle of Silence_ —because then it would be nearly impossible to get them out. _Nearly_ , but Loki does not relish making a visit to the Isle of Silence. He shudders just thinking about it.

“All right,” he says, laying a hand on Lorelei’s prison to get a feel for the magic holding it together. “Now how do we get you out…?”

“You’re going to need this.”

Loki whirls around. Gaea stands just outside the shadow of a pillar near the side chamber door, holding Odin’s staff in both hands. He stares at her, unable to come up with a suitable excuse that isn’t an outright lie, and she smiles.

“Goodness, how you’ve changed,” she says. “No bold excuse? No ‘What are you doing here’? Where is that silver tongue, Loki?”

“Haven’t polished it in a while,” he says smoothly, and it isn’t a lie, exactly, so it passes. “What _are_ you doing here?”

She steps forward with a finger to her lips. “Technically, I was never here,” she says, and she offers him the staff. “Was I?”

He smirks and takes it, but then he grows sober. “I cannot lie, Gaea,” he tells her.

“Then you had better hurry and not get caught,” she says, turning away. “And be sure to return that when you’ve finished,” she adds, “or Odin will be angry that you stole it.”

Loki chuckles. Typical. After all, who would believe the notorious liar over beloved Gaea? He grips Odin’s staff in both hands. Verity would. Only Verity. Everyone else would throw him to the wolves before believing him. The All-Mother certainly has.

“Wait,” he says, and she stops and turns back around and waits.

“Is this the terrible fate he told you about?” he asks her at last.

Gaea glances at Lorelei and Sigurd and then meets Loki’s eyes and nods. “But I do not believe anyone should be resigned to their fate,” she says, holding his gaze.

It could be a trick. It could be part of the All-Mother’s scheme. She could be saying all of this at _his_ recommendation.

Loki chooses not to care.

Gaea leaves him and he turns to Lorelei and Sigurd, staff in hand. All that matters now is that he fulfills his promise to Verity and rescue his two allies from their fates. Perhaps someday they might return the favor.

The staff channels magic much more efficiently than Loki by himself, so breaking the curse on the goose eggs takes mere seconds. There is a flash, a crack, and then Lorelei and Sigurd are standing there free of their prisons.

“—do this, please don’t!” shouts Lorelei, but then she gasps and stumbles back into Loki.

“Whoa,” he says, catching her. She spins around in shock and pushes him away.

“ _Loki?_ ” she says.

“I’m so sorry, Lorelei,” he says.

“ _You!_ ”

Loki turns at Sigurd’s growl, ready with explanations and apologies, but Sigurd grabs him and shoves him back against the nearest column.

“Sigurd, I—”

Sigurd punches him in the face and his head smacks against the column, knocking out his vision and making his head spin.

“Sigurd, wait—” he begins, but his speech is slurred from the blow. He holds up his hands and drops the staff. He hears it clatter on the stone floor.

“You _bastard_ ,” shouts Sigurd, hitting him again, and then he releases Loki’s cuirass to grab him by the throat and slam him against the column again.

“Sigurd,” Loki gasps, clawing the back of Sigurd’s hand, “I just _rescued_ you! Stop!”

“ _Rescued_ us?” says Sigurd. “Sure, after handing us over to Odin!”

“I didn’t—”

“Where’s Amora?” Sigurd demands, shoving him up higher until Loki is on his toes.

“I don’t know,” says Loki, trying to pull Sigurd’s fingers off. “We’re not together anymore. The Red Skull’s spell was reversed. I’m—I’m sorry.”

“You’re damn right, you’re sorry!” he roars.

“Sigurd,” Lorelei warns sternly. “Odin could arrive at any moment. We must go.”

“She’s right,” croaks Loki. Angela’s distraction can only last so long, and eventually Odin will wonder where his staff has gone. “Whether you believe me or not, I came to get you out of here.”

“I won’t fall for your tricks again, snake,” growls Sigurd.

“Fine! Then stay here and let Odin find you!” Loki sneers. “Or let me teleport you away from here safely.”

Sigurd scoffs. “Because going _anywhere_ with _you_ is _safe_.”

Loki tries to pretend that doesn’t hurt. “Do you have another idea?” he asks.

Sigurd glares at him and then throws him to the side, and Loki hisses when his hands skid painfully on the stone floor. He pushes himself up and looks around for Odin’s staff, avoiding Lorelei and Sigurd’s gazes. So much for gratitude.

He picks up Odin’s staff and banishes it back to the armory, and then turns to face the others’ glares. Lorelei steps forward first and holds out her arm.

“If this is another trick, I _will_ have my revenge,” she says.

“And you would have the right to it,” says Loki bitterly, taking her elbow purely out of courtesy. Contact isn’t necessary for the teleportation spell. “ _ELSEWHERE_.”

When they appear in Sigurd’s living room, Lorelei coolly pulls her arm away and Loki heads straight for the kitchen. He digs through Sigurd’s pantry and refrigerator until he finds jam. He finds strawberry first, which is _useless_ , but there’s an unlabeled jar in the back, and when Loki opens it and sniffs it, it turns out to be blackberry.

Lorelei and Sigurd are whispering heatedly in the living room, but they stop when Loki comes back in with the jar. They both glare at him and Sigurd’s gaze drops to the jar.

“What are you doing with that?” demands Sigurd.

“A protection spell,” says Loki, kicking Sigurd’s rug aside to make room on the floor. “Both of you are hidden from Heimdall’s gaze, but if Odin is looking for you, that won’t be enough.”

“You can’t use that,” says Sigurd, surging forward angrily. “My neighbor hand-made that for me! Use the strawberry if you have to!”

“You can’t use _strawberry_ for protection spells, you idiot!” Loki snarls.

Sigurd flushes. “How am I supposed to know that?”

“That’s enough,” snaps Lorelei, pushing them apart. “Do the spell. Then get out.”

Loki clenches his jaw and crouches down to start smearing jam runes in a circle on the hardwood floor. Sigurd and Lorelei watch him silently, their glares burning holes into his back, and he blinks back the stinging in his eyes and tries to focus on finishing the spell quickly. When the rune circle is complete, he places his hand in the center and mutters, “ _SHIELD_.” A wave of green magic pulses out across the floor until it hits the walls, lighting them up momentarily, and then it disappears.

“Great,” says Sigurd. “Clean this up. Then get the fuck out of my house.”

Loki slowly gets to his feet, waving a hand to clear the floor of jam, steeling himself, and then he meets Sigurd’s glare.

“As you wish,” he spits, and teleports away.

\--- 

 

Chasing Angela around the Nine Realms was less fun than it sounded at the time, with Thor sniping at Loki every so often (they really are trying and failing to forget the whole worthy-of-Mjolnir thing), so when it’s over, Loki is weary, but he makes one more stop before he heads back to Manhattan.

Sigurd’s house is more imposing than he remembers. It seems to loom over him, its windows eyes glaring, and he approaches cautiously. It’s only been a few days since they parted; Sigurd could still be angry. But if he is, then maybe they could just fuck and he’ll get over it. Nothing smooths over animosity like hate sex. Once Sigurd blows off some steam, perhaps things can go back to the way they were. Loki is willing to take a pounding if it means healing their relationship.

He takes a deep breath and knocks on the door. He thought a lot about how to knock. Shave and a haircut? Open up, it’s the Disir? Would you like to buy some Girl Scout cookies? He settles for three medium knocks and hopes they sound remorseful. But how does one transmit remorse through knocks?

He stands just out of range of the peephole so that Sigurd has to open the door to see who it is, but even so, he doesn’t answer for a long time. Loki is about to try knocking again when the door finally opens.

“Sigurd—” he begins, hoping to get the first word in before Sigurd can tell him to get the fuck out of here.

“What the Hel do you want?” Sigurd snarls over him.

“To apologize,” he says quickly. “I want to apologize. I need to talk to you.”

“So talk,” says Sigurd, one hand still on the door.

“May I come in?” Loki asks, peering over Sigurd’s shoulder into the house. If Lorelei is there, he can kill two birds with one stone. (Oh gods, don’t think about killing birds, don’t think about it…)

“No.”

This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is, and Loki frowns at him. Sigurd only glares back.

“Sigurd, I’m sorry,” he says. “I have a mile-long list of excuses, but I know none of them are good enough. Even under the spell, I shouldn’t have—I’m _sorry_. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry for what I said. I was blinded by some stupid new goodness I thought I had but—” He laughs, remembering. It made the bad in him good and the good… “I was _worthy_ ,” he says.

Sigurd’s brow furrows in confusion. “What?”

“Of Mjolnir. Thor’s hammer. I was worthy. I picked it up, and I—” He laughs again. “I smashed Thor’s face with his own hammer. I was good and worthy, but that—that doesn’t mean anything if I betray my friends.”

Sigurd stares at him for a long time, holding the door open, and Loki dares to hope. Then Sigurd speaks.

“We’re not friends,” he says. “We’re not anything. We’re done. And if I ever see you again, _I’ll_ smash _your_ face in.” And then he steps back and slams the door.

Loki stares at the closed door in shock. He’s still mad? Too mad even for hate sex? But Loki apologized! What else can he do? He puts a hand on the door, thinking maybe he’s seeing things, maybe this too is an illusion formed by his subconscious in another effort to punish himself (wouldn’t be the first time), but the door is solid and closed beneath his hand. “No,” he whispers, and then again, louder, “No. Sigurd!” He pounds on the door with a fist. “Sigurd, open the door! Sigurd!” There is only silence from the inside of the house, the loudest silence Loki has heard outside of the _Isle_ of Silence. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please— _I’m sorry!_ ”

Loki sinks to his knees, leaning on the door and pounding on it frantically. He could teleport inside, but he is afraid to. He knows the rules about closed doors; to violate the sanctity of that barrier would warrant a harsher punishment than just being ignored. That’s why Midgard has laws for standing your ground against intruders.

But this is almost too much to bear.

Sigurd never opens the door. He never answers Loki’s texts. There is no going back to the way it was before. There is no going back.

There is only going forward.

* * *

 

 

**VI. GET LUCKY (PART TWO)**

 

_We’ve come too far to give up who we are,_

_so let’s raise the bar and our cups to the stars._

\- Daft Punk

 

His phone has been buzzing for an hour, but he doesn’t look at it until it begins to buzz nonstop—a call.

He checks the name and picks it up, even though he’s been ignoring her texts all day. “Hey Verity, I’m doing a crossword,” he says. “Seven letters. All the stuff you take with you.”

She is quiet for a moment. “Clothes?”

“It has a g.”

Another pause. “Are you okay?”

He doesn’t answer for a long time, because he’s still struggling with being unable to lie and he doesn’t _want_ to answer.

“No,” he says at last, quietly, because the truth is all he has.

“I’m coming over.” She hangs up before he can argue and only twenty minutes later she is at his door.

“New clue,” he says, holding the newspaper in one hand and the door in another. “‘Son of a Preacher Man’ artist. Only maybe you’re the wrong person to ask about a popular music question—”

Verity steps into his apartment and quite suddenly throws her arms around him. He’s taken aback at first, and blanks on what to do, and then he lets the newspaper fall from his fingers and he wraps his arms around her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, hugging him tightly, and he buries his face in her neck, breathing in the scent of her. She smells like comfort and friendship and lemon and honey. He is acutely aware of how lucky he is to have her.

She pulls away slowly and reaches up to cup the side of his face with one hand, smiling softly. “Would it be difficult to answer if I asked how you were?”

“Probably,” he says.

“Let’s sit down.” She leads him over to his couch and when they’re sitting down, she holds him again and strokes his hair.

They sit in silence for a long time and finally Loki admits something he has been almost too embarrassed to _think_.

“I really thought he’d take me back,” he says. “I thought—After I rescued him and Lorelei, I thought it would be okay. That handing them to Odin was the worst thing I’d done to them and rectifying that would be enough.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I thought if he was angry—still angry—I thought… Well, he’ll fuck me and get it out of his system, blow off steam. It’ll be rough, but then it’ll pass. But he didn’t. He didn’t even let me through the door.” He groans. “Ugh. Fuck, this is so embarrassing.”

“It’s okay,” says Verity.

“I just…” Loki bites his lip and then breathes out shakily. “I just don’t understand why this _hurts_ so much.”

Verity holds him tighter for a moment. “I’m sorry. Break-ups suck.”

“ _Break-ups?_ ” says Loki incredulously, sitting up and staring at her. “We weren’t—It wasn’t—” He groans again and clutches his head, leaning over. Verity rubs his back gently.

“Whatever it _was_ ,” says Verity, “it was a relationship of some kind, and he ended it. _Like_ a break-up. Hell, when you said you didn’t have time for me, I took _that_ like a break-up.”

Loki winces and Verity squeezes his shoulder.

“I didn’t even… I _hate_ the guy,” Loki mutters.

“That may be true,” says Verity, “but you also liked him, or at least needed him somehow,” she corrects with a roll of her eyes when Loki gives her a skeptical look, “and now it’s over, and there’s an empty hole he used to fill. And _that_ —the loss, the emptiness— _that_ hurts.”

She’s right, of course. He thinks about making a crude joke about exactly _which_ hole Sigurd used to fill, to distract himself from how right she is, but then the moment passes and he has nothing. No jokes, no lies, no dissembling. No Sigurd. He has _nothing_ left.

No. That’s not true.

“Fuck, Verity,” he says with a despairing chuckle. “I’ve lost everything. You’re all I’ve got. You and the truth.”

She breathes out a laugh. “What about Thor?”

“I don’t know if I ever had him to begin with,” he admits. After all, their entire relationship is built on a lie. Thor doesn’t even really know who he is.

 _If I am loved, it is only because I am not known_.

“And anyway, he’s still unworthy because of th-that brown t-trout—”

Verity laughs.

“No, no, I—”

But she laughs over him, and then Loki laughs, too, because it’s ridiculous, really. He’s the God of Lies, and he doesn’t even have lying in him.

The God of Nothing.

Fuck, who even is he?

When their laughter dies down, he sighs.

“Fine,” he says. “So you and Thor and the truth. That’s all I have.”

“Good.”

And he looks up and sees Thor standing in the doorway.

And soon enough, he doesn’t have Thor anymore either.

\---

 

“All right, I’ve another one: With thieves I consort, with the vilest, in short, I’m quite at ease in depravity—”

Loki groans. Well, he knows how Verity feels now. Though she’s certainly never found herself _locked_ in a _cell_ with Loki, awaiting the All-Mother’s judgment, gagged and without hope of escape. Or any hope at all. This morning—if it was morning; there are no windows here—he was rudely awoken when the older Loki threw bits of cracked wall at his back. He would have retaliated, had his arm not still been healing, had his chains been a bit longer, had his heart been interested in doing anything besides drowning in despair—he has many excuses. He’s just not sure if it’s worth it to fight anymore. He’s lost Thor. He can’t tell if he’s free from the curse of the truth, but then again, it doesn’t matter anymore. He doesn’t _have_ any more lies. Even if he could lie and manipulate his way out of this, who would listen?

And then there’s the issue of the muzzle, which nearly choked him when he first awoke after Eir set his arm, and which destroys any chance of his defending himself—or pleading forgiveness, whichever seems appropriate.

“Yet all divines use me, and savants can’t lose me, for I am the center of gravity.”

Loki ignores him; even though that rarely dissuades Loki from doing anything, he also can’t give him the satisfaction of his attention.

“Come, it’s easy!” says Loki the Elder. “I’ll give you a hint: You and I see its shape when we look in the mirror.”

He doesn’t answer— _can’t_ answer, _obviously_ —so King Loki sighs.

“All right, I _know_ you’ll get this one,” he says. “No sooner spoken than broken.” A beat. “Quite right! Silence! I _knew_ you could figure it out.”

Finally Loki can’t take it anymore and he sits up to glare at his older self. _Get out_ , he wants to say. _Get out and shut the fuck up and_ die.

King Loki just grins at him. “You liked that one, eh?” he says. “I’d tell you another, but I believe you have a visitor.”

There is a clanking of a lock and a scraping of a wooden door on stone floor, and Loki turns to the barred wall of the cell, surprised. When he glances back over his shoulder, the older Loki is gone.

He waits, listening to the footsteps as his two visitors walk down the hall of the dungeon—not quite the most secure, as Eir is still seeing to his arm, but he has the feeling he’ll be locked away down there soon—to his lonely cell. He broke the chains once already, by tying them around the bed frame and snapping the links with pressure, which is why they are too short now for him to approach the bars of his cage to greet his guests.

He does stand up, though, when Sigurd and Lorelei step into view.

His tongue tries to move automatically before he remembers the muzzle, cold and hard in his mouth. All that comes out is a strangled grunt, and he manages to still his tongue before he starts to panic and choke again. It took Eir a long while to calm him the first time. She just sedated him the second time.

The third time no one even came.

The fourth time, King Loki did.

Loki blinks back tears and tries to focus on Sigurd and Lorelei instead. They’ve come. They’ve come for him.

So why do they look so angry?

“It’s true, then,” says Lorelei. “They’ve finally put a muzzle on Loki the Lapdog.”

“About time,” says Sigurd, and where Lorelei looks amused but angry, Sigurd simply looks disgusted. “We have suffered enough of his lies.”

 _No_ , he wants to say. _No, I never lied to you. Not about anything… important…_

Except for the small matter of his identity. Loki groans and quickly refers to the only person between them they can all trust. He holds two fingers up on one hand, like a V, and then crosses his fingers.

Sigurd frowns. “What?”

But Lorelei understands. “Verity? She’s fine. But we didn’t come to play sign language interpreter. We came to say goodbye.”

_No…_

“I really can’t believe I fell for the whole thing,” says Sigurd, sneering. “You _obviously_ weren’t the kid. But I let myself think you weren’t bad. And that worked for you, didn’t it?” He suddenly surges forward, grabbing the bars of the cell, and Loki jumps back a step, his chains clinking. “You got off on it, didn’t you?” Sigurd snarls. “On the fact that I’m a _hero_ and you could _defile_ a hero. You _sick freak_.”

 _No, no, no, it wasn’t like that, no_ — Loki fights against the chains, but he can’t get close to the door, and Sigurd steps back, disgust twisting his features.

“Take a bow, _God of Lies_ ,” Sigurd says. “You fooled us all.”

 _No, no, wait—_ He struggles against the chains, lunging at the barred door, his tongue pressing desperately against the stilling metal of the gag, but Lorelei and Sigurd turn away and disappear down the hall.

_Wait! Wait! Please!_

He pulls until his arm slips out of its sling and it hurts and he’s choking, but he has to stop them, they have to come back, they have to save him like he saved them, his allies, they were his allies, even Odin knew they were…

He falls to his knees and sobs and chokes and he can’t stop. It’s over. It’s all over.

He feels someone pull him back and the chains slacken enough for him to cradle his arm against his chest again. He’s still choking, and maybe he’s even drowning, and it doesn’t matter. It’s over. Nothing matters. Mama, he just killed a man, and _fuck_ , it’s _over_.

Someone wraps their arms around him and pulls him close, gently, and he hears King Loki’s older, hoarser voice shushing him.

“There, there, little Loki,” says Loki the Elder. “We don’t need anyone else. Loki is always alone. Never loved. We need no one else. Here, I’ll tell you another riddle.

“You are trapped in a windowless, doorless room made of dry cement, with four walls, a ceiling, a floor, and all you have is a box of matches.

“How do you get out of the room?”

 _Three strikes_ , he thinks, _and you’re out_.

\---

 

So Loki burns. He burns the way he knows best: For himself.

Because if he’s learned anything— _anything_ —from all of this, it’s that he can’t burn for anyone else’s sake. Lokis never can. It’s not fair to anyone. It wasn’t fair to the first Loki, nor the second. It certainly wasn’t fair to Sigurd. Mutually Assured Self-Destruction looks good on no one.

So Loki burns, and the choice has nothing to do with anyone else. He isn’t giving up. He _won’t_ give up. Not for King Loki, who _has_ given up, who thinks no one will _ever_ love Loki. Not for Sigurd, who he only kept around to feed his own self-loathing, who _can’t_ love Loki and who, it’s true, _won’t_ accept him for who he is. Not even for Verity, the only person who believes in him and who doesn’t even believe he _needs_ to change and likes him anyway.

He has to do this for himself, to break the chains of his own destiny, to be the master of his own story and not an empty vessel for someone else to fill or project their desires onto. No more self-loathing, no more fatalism. This is Loki’s fourth-wall-breaking manifesto.

He’s heard it said that one will never know true love until one loves oneself.

Well. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. Self-love is an uphill battle. But he certainly can’t do it while clinging to illusions and depending upon others’ inconsistent opinions of him. He can’t do it if he’s going to depend on others to love him first.

That, too, is fair to no one.

So he burns, and like the legend of the phoenix…

It all comes down to this: He _knows_ what he is. And he _loves_ it.

He is Loki, God of Stories.

First, last, and always.

 

_(We’re up all night to get lucky,_

_We’re up all night to get lucky,_

_We’re up all night to get lucky,_

_We’re up all night to get lucky.)_

**Author's Note:**

> The first crossword puzzle clue comes from Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye; it is not of my making.


End file.
